The awesome power of God (The Red Sea, part 1)

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“When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in His servant Moses.” Exodus 14:31 (NASB)

This morning I told Ian the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and God parting the Red Sea for them to escape from the Egyptians.  It occurred to me what an amazing privilege it is to be able to introduce Him to the wonderful things God has done through the ages.  He’ll be hearing this story for the rest of his life, but today I got to make that first impression on his heart.  As I tried to convey what an incredible event this was, I myself was overwhelmed at the realization of God’s magnificent love and awesome power.

“We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.” Psalm 78:4 (NASB)

First I told Ian the story using our flannel board set.  He definitely caught parts of it, especially the fact that they were leaving Egypt and following God in the pillar of cloud.  The parting of the waters was less dramatic than I would have liked (just a small picture that looked rather far off).  So I turned to some of our Bible storybooks hoping to find some pictures that would help him understand.  I love the pictures in Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury.  Most of them are the same as the original illustrations in The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, but the pages are bigger so it’s easier to focus on the details.  (I haven’t seen the illustrations in the new version, but I’ve read reviews from people who’ve seen both, and most of them seem to prefer the older pictures) Ian loves looking through both of those Bibles because of the the beautiful pictures.  They didn’t let me down.  The picture of the Israelites beginning to cross between the waters was gorgeous and powerful.

After studying that picture for a while we pulled out The Beginner’s Bible and I read the story one more time.  I usually really like the way the Beginner’s Bible breaks the story down into simple language while still including the important details.  (Incidentally, I have the older version by Karen Henley.  I guess it was republished under the same name but with different text and illustrations.  Not sure why they kept the same title when they changed everything else, but again, reviews from people who are familiar with both seem to favor the older version.)  I was disappointed with this story though.  It didn’t mention anything about Moses raising His staff to part the waters; it just said “God sent a strong wind to push the sea back.”  I guess they were trying to emphasize that God did the miracle rather than Moses, but the staff had been part of our flannelgraph story and was in the other Bible story books, so it just felt like something was missing.

After we’d read through the story Ian seemed to be catching on to what really happened, but I wanted to really leave a strong first impression.  I turned on The Prince of Egypt and cued it up to the beginning of the song they sing as they’re walking out of Egypt.  The enormity of what God had done in freeing his people hit me hard and I just started weeping.  Then came that amazing scene where the waters fly up and leave the dry ground.  I watched in awe as the people picked their way across the sea bed.  And then, when the sea had come crashing in over the Egyptians and the Israelites looked back across the now peaceful waters, I let out a big sigh.  I was so overcome with the emotion of what had just occurred.  And to my delight, Ian was all excited as well.  He kept trying to show me with his arms what had happened to the water.  “Holy Cows!” he shouted.  (Thank you, Grandpa, for teaching him this new favorite phrase.)  He got it.  That made me cry even more.

What plans does God have for my children’s lives?  Where will He take them?  What mighty works of God will they see before they die?  Only He knows the answers to those questions.  But I get to prepare their hearts to walk that journey.  They will expect mighty things of God because they will know “His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.“

Posted in Bible lessons, Our Vision, Preschool

Baby Moses

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We ended up doing two weeks on the story of Baby Moses due to a death in the family and the ensuing chaos.  Ian certainly didn’t mind.  From the first day, the story captured his heart in a way no other has.  He asked me to retell the story with the flannelgraph several times, and then he spent another half hour moving the figures around and telling it himself.  (I wish I’d gotten a picture, especially since it happened every time we got the flannelgraph out!)  Then he started wrapping his stuffed bear up in a blanket, calling it his “baby”, and for days he spoke to it in a soft little voice, rocked it in his arms, and lovingly carried it around in a basket I gave him once I saw how into it he was getting.  SO sweet!

For our memory verse, we used the passage from ABC Jesus Loves Me week 7: “When I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God whose word I praise.” Psalm 56:3-4.  It’s on Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em in Your Heart CD, and again I found myself lamenting that his songs don’t include the reference.  Luckily we review our verses every time we read through our Bible Notebook, so I’m hoping Ian will pick up the references that way for the songs that don’t include them.  Along with the memory verse (which is one of our favorites–we find all sorts of occasions to sing it), Ian really liked the song about Baby Moses from the Lullaby Bible (which I think has a CD, but we just have the book).  He kept asking me to wrap him up in a blanket, hold him like a baby, and sing it to him.

Because of of everything going on this week, I didn’t end up using an iPod playlist.  We did read the story from the NIV several times.  We also watched the first part of The Prince of Egypt  (next week we’ll be talking about Moses leading the people through the Red Sea so we’ll finish it then) and Veggie Tales: Duke and the Great Pie War (also available streaming on Netflix), which includes a story about Miriam taking care of baby Moses.

For our Bible Notebook we did this Baby Moses craft from Little Blots (you have to scroll down the page to find it).  First Ian colored the baby and the basket with crayons.  Then he used blue watercolor paint over it.

Finally, I traced his hands several times on green construction paper, cut them out, and glued them on to be the “reeds” where Moses’ mother hid the basket.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach

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As I shared in this earlier post, I really want to focus on the Bible as the center of our homeschool.  Along those lines, I have been reading the Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach by Robin Sampson.  I think I first stumbled across the Heart of Wisdom website looking for teaching ideas back when we started with Creation.  Although much of what she has is geared toward older children, I find her site  (and the book) very encouraging, and I know I’ll be spending lots of time gleaning from Robin’s years of experience.

I haven’t finished the book yet, so I can’t write a review (though I plan to eventually!), but I wanted to go ahead and share because she’s doing a giveaway on her blog!  Check out the fabulous reviews on Amazon if you’re interested.  You won’t be sorry!  (You can also download an excerpt from the book to get started!)

Posted in Homeschool Resources, Our Vision

still to come

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Now that I’m almost caught up to where we are with our Bible lessons, I just wanted to mention that I do plan on posting on other subjects as well.  We’re just about done with our first run-through of Before Five in a Row (B4FIAR), where we’ve pretty much just read the books.  As we start going through them again, I’m hoping to do a few more activities with Ian related to each book so I’ll be sharing about those.

I also want to be able to share some of the great homeschool resources I’ve come across. My oldest may only be three, but I LOVE research.  I also like to know where I’m going, so I’m usually a few steps ahead of where we need to be.  I read marriage books as a teenager, parenting books as a single teacher, and I started looking into homeschooling before Ian had turned two.  So nowadays I’m reading a lot about the early elementary years, and I’ve come across some great resources for families trying to homeschool on a strict budget.

The other thing I hope to post on are parenting books and other resources that have really impacted me.  I think it’s so important to be intentional in the way we raise our children, rather than just reacting to the issues that come up.  I’m looking forward to reviewing some of the books that have shaped my vision for parenting.  (Again, my oldest is only three.  I’m no expert.  BUT that researching bug has helped me discover some of the REAL experts out there.)

Posted in B4FIAR, Homeschool Resources, Parenting Resources

Joseph’s Colorful Coat

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In accordance with the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 6 lesson, we spent a week talking about Joseph’s colorful coat, his dreams, and how he ended up in Egypt after his brothers sold him.  I did use the Bible verse from the curriculum this week (Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21).  I love Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CDs, because they do a great job of helping us memorize Scripture.  I just wish they incorporated Bible reference so we knew where to find the verses!  Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

For our Bible Notebook, Ian made a “coat” from a tissue paper collage.  I found a paper doll online, then saved the image and enlarged it so it would take up the full page.  Then used it to draw the outline of a coat for Ian to fill in with tissue paper squares.


After it was dry, I cut it out and helped Ian paste it over the Joseph paper doll, along with the hair he chose for him.

Every week when we add our latest creation to Ian’s Bible Notebook, we read through all the previous pages.  He’s getting very good at “reading” the memory verses!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Noah’s Ark

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Here are some highlights from our week learning about Noah’s Ark.  The ABC Jesus Loves me Week 5 lesson focused on the part of the story where Noah builds the boat, but since we had just had this glorious rainbow over our house the week before, I wanted to do the whole story so we could get to the part about the rainbow!

Once again, I diverged from the lesson plan on the memory verse.  I wanted Ian to have a verse in his heart that would comfort him when he felt scared, as Noah’s family must have felt on the ark.  So we sang this to the tune of “Ring Around the Rosie”:

“Keep me safe my God, for in you I take refuge.  Psalm chapter sixteen, verse one.”

When I got out the flannel board with the figures for the story of Noah, Ian was a little disappointed.  He kept asking for Adam and Eve.  Luckily, he got over it (don’t they always?) and soon was enjoying telling the story himself.  Whenever he’d get to the part where it was just the ark all alone on the water, he’d call out to me to sing the Bible verse song.

Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

  • “Genesis 6-7” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing (including the song “Noah Walked With God”)
  • “Noah & the Ark” story on CD by the Paul Winter Consort (which I found at our library)
  • “Who Built the Ark?” from a CD of Bible songs I found at the 99-Cent Store
  • “Noah, Build A Boat” from The Singing Bible

For our Bible Notebook, Ian fingerpainted a rainbow (though I wish we’d done it directly on the paper, as our print didn’t turn out so well) and then I made this ark from www.janbrett.com* for him (though I had to cut it down a bit both to make it fit on our paper and to place it on the water rather than the land).  Then Ian glued a collage of blue construction paper to make the sea.  (You can’t tell very well in this picture, but the ark has “peek-a-boo” flaps to reveal animals underneath.)

*After reading the Amazon reviews of Jan Brett’s book On Noah’s Ark, I decided NOT to read it with Ian, as much as I enjoy her illustrations.  The main complaints reviewers had were that she 1) left God out of the story (!), and 2) made up a granddaughter who is not in the biblical account to be the main character.  I didn’t want to confuse Ian by reading something that told a story so different from the Bible.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Adam and Eve eat the fruit

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I’m still trying to catch up to what we’re actually learning about, but I do want to put up at least basic posts for the Bible stories we’ve already covered.  A family crisis last week has kept me from writing, but I’d like to be caught up by the end of the day today (which will be a little easier since we ended up taking about a week off of any “school”.)

Ian was already familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, but it’s a favorite so he didn’t mind spending a week on it.  This was the first week we incorporated a “letter of the week.”  Ian really liked writting the letter in a rice tray, and he enjoys the pictures in Big Thoughts for Little People so much, he always wants more than just the page for our letter.  I let him look through the rest of the book, but I tell him he’ll have to wait until “K” week (or whatever) to read about the pages that catch his interest.

For our memory verse, I strayed from the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 3 lesson.  As I was looking at the activities in the lesson plan I came across this verse and it seemed more appropriate.  I want verses that Ian can really internalize, words that will express the feelings in his heart as he grows in his relationship with the Lord.  Psalm 119:10 seemed more “personal,” so I set it to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”:

“I will seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.  Psalm one-nineteen, verse ten.  Psalm one-nineteen, verse ten.  I will seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.”

I did go with her suggestion of teaching “Oh Be Careful, Little Eyes, What You See.”  Ian loved this song and asked me sing it over and over.  I love the message and know we’ll refer to these lyrics many times in years to come.  Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

Our Bible Notebook was a big hit this week.  I saw this idea for a fingerprint tree and used the “alternate paint idea” of pudding.  Since I’m always battling with Elijah not to smear food all over his high chair tray, I thought he’d love being a part of this project.  Not so much!  He screamed and refused to touch the pudding, even after I smeared a little on his lips.  Ian, on the other hand, had a blast!

I mixed up a batch of chocolate pudding to use for the trunk (and for us to eat for dessert that night), plus a batch of vanilla to dye with food coloring for play and our notebook page.  Here’s the finished product!


Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Creation

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Here we go!  I’ve been a little slow getting this blog up and running, so I wanted to look back over the last few weeks since we started “officially” doing some school work.  As I’ve said, the most important element of school to me is studying God’s Word and helping my kids hide it (“treasure” it) in their hearts.  So while we are touching on a few other things, the main priority is our Bible lesson each week.  If for whatever reason we don’t have time to get to anything else, that’s fine.

We actually spent two weeks talking about Creation.  Our memory verse was Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Ian loved holding up a 1 on each hand, and had it memorized in minutes!  We sang it to the tune of “Are You Sleeping?” as suggested in the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 1 lesson plan, as well as the Scripture Rock version on our iPod playlist (see below).

Although I purchased a Betty Lukens Small Deluxe Set (flannelboard and felt pieces) on eBay to use with our Bible lessons, I borrowed these felt circles from our children’s ministry at church to help talk about what was created each day because I liked the way each day was visually distinctive.

There is a seventh circle in the set, but I didn’t think it clearly communicated the message “God rested” to my three-year old, so we didn’t use it.

I want to keep a record of the stories we study, so we started a Bible notebook.  It’s just a 3-ring binder that provides a place for our memory verses and some sort of craft to remind Ian of the story.  For Creation, I’d already been thinking I wanted to do something for each day, so I started brainstorming and looking for inspiration.  I got some good ideas from this Creation book, raided my sticker stash and some magazines for pictures, and to label each day, I printed out these flash cards and just cut out the text and numbers.  Here’s what we ended up with:

Pretty simple: just yellow chalk on black paper.

Ian got a fingerpainting set for Christmas, and everytime he makes a masterpiece, I save it to use for collages.  So we cut the water for each of these days out of one of his blue paintings.  He loved spreading the cottonball clouds on Day 2, and collecting the leaves for the plants on Day 3.  (The flash makes it hard to see, but that was a magazine picture of a pink flower as well!)

For Day 4 we found several “suns” in magazines, so Ian chose his favorite.  No luck with a moon, so I just cut a crescent out of a fun print I found, and Ian loved the star stickers.  He found some feathers on one of our walks that week, so we figured they could represent birds and added them to our collection of stickers and magazine pictures. (My favorite was the whale’s tail.)

Animals for Day 6 were easy to find, but I couldn’t figure out what I was going to do for Day 7.  The best I thought I’d find was pictures of babies sleeping.  Then I came across this picture advertising a spa around Christmas time, and while it may be a little stereotypical with the white beard and all, I figured a resting Santa was more appropriate than babies.

Here was our iPod playlist for the week, which Ian just listens to as he plays:

We also worked a bit on recognizing the numerals 1-7 since Ian doesn’t know any of those yet and it tied in well with this story.  And that was our week!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

A typical week’s plan for us

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I thought I’d take a few minutes to share how I usually go about planning a week of “school.”  The first place I go to is my ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum book.  All the lesson plans are available on the website, but I like the ease of flipping through actual pages to find what I need.  I printed out the 36 week table that gives a quick overview of what’s being taught week by week, followed all 36 weekly lesson plans.  You DO NOT have to print all this out to use the curriculum.  It just works best for my brain.  (You can also order a spiral bound book from the website with everything already printed if that option works better for your family.)

As I’ve said before, I don’t use every part of the curriculum.  Here are the key components I take note of:

  • Bible story
  • Memory verse (although I sometimes choose my own that I feel is more appropriate for the story or that I particularly want Ian to learn)
  • Letter
  • (Book of the week)

I usually use a book from my booklist (which I talked about in this post) rather than the one listed in the curriculum.  Once I know those components, I put together my weekly plan.  I don’t schedule each day, though we do have a typical pattern we fall into.  I usually just put together a sort of list of what elements I want to include in our week, and then I try to get to them whenever I want to have some focused learning time.  It might look something like this:

Bible story: Adam & Eve

Memory verse: (Psalm 119:10) “I will seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.” (This isn’t the verse from ABCJLM for that story, but I came across it in one of the activities she had listed, and it seemed more appropriate to me.)

Concept Focus: colors, shapes, numbers, or a letter of the week, anything I think Ian could benefit from being exposed to.  (I’m going ahead and reviewing letters with Ian, mostly because he’s starting to be interested in writing.  I don’t want him learning poor habits so I’m teaching him correct letter formation using various activities other than actually writing.)

Songs to sing (we do these throughout the week as we’re getting dressed, making meals, in the car, etc.):

  • Memory song: Tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, saying “Psalm 119 verse 10,” then repeating the words of the verse.
  • “Oh Be Careful, Little Eyes”

iPod playlist (I’ll put these on in the background as Ian is playing).  This usually contains things pertaining to the Bible story from various sources:

Books:

  • Bibles (we read from the NIV at night, but I also use several different children’s Bible storybooks, which I’ll have to talk about in another post)
  • Big Thoughts for Little People (just the page for the letter of the week)
  • My First Steps book (recommended in the ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum)
  • Book of the week

Activities:

  • Tell Bible story using flannelboard
  • Trace upper- and lowercase letter of the week using sandpaper letters
  • Writing letter of the week in rice
  • Bible Notebook (We do some sort of 2-dimensional craft to represent that week’s Bible story and put the memory verse on the page.  I go to the weekly lesson plan online and look through all the activity links for inspiration, usually coming up with my own idea based on something I see).  After we’ve made our page we go through our entire Bible Notebook from beginning to end, reading the verses, briefly mentioning each story, etc. to help get the verses and stories more deeply rooted in our hearts.)
  • Ideas from the Before Five in a Row Manual our Homeschool Share to go along with our book of the week.

My teacher training comes out a bit, as I also feel the need to write down weekly learning objectives:

Objectives: By the end of this week, Ian will be able to:

  • Retell the Bible story using flannel board
  • Recite (or sing) the Bible verse
  • Write the letter of the week with his finger in rice/sand/finger-paint

And that’s a pretty typical week for us.  If there’s a video that goes with our Bible story (I usually check the library for the Beginner’s Bible videos, Nest Entertainment’s Animated Stories from the Old/New Testament, Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible, and VeggieTales), I usually let the boys watch that sometime during the week.  I also try to expose them to some Spanish through Salsa videos at least once a week (more on those another time), and they love watching Signing Time videos as well.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Our Vision

Other things floating around in my brain

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After I finished that last post about the different curricula I checked out (I really don’t like that word “curricula”, but “curriculums” just sounds wrong, so I’ll stick with it for now), I realized I’d left out a whole other side of my thought process in landing where we are.  I was all prepared to start describing what we’re currently doing, but the picture would be incomplete if I didn’t share some of the other ideas floating around in my brain.  Hence the title of this post.

I guess I can really boil the rest of it all down to this: Charlotte Mason.  How I ever got through a Master of Education program and a teaching credential without hearing her name, I just can’t understand.  Charlotte Mason is pretty much a hero in the homeschool world, but since she actually taught in schools, it seems to me like “traditional” schoolteachers could learn a lot from her writings as well.  If you want to find out more about her, here is a good place to start.

There is so much I like about Charlotte Mason’s methods.  I love the idea of including artist and composer studies in our school work.  Nature study seems like such a wonderful thing to include as well, especially with boys.  (I’m very prone to just wanting to stay inside and do desk work.) I’ve never been much on poetry, but reading Charlotte Mason’s books encouraged me to give it a try, and Ian LOVES reading poems together. I’ve also started thinking about how to incorporate foreign language study into our preschool learning time.  Finally, Iknow I did my best learning growing up through the many “living books” I found at the library, and this is one of the key parts of a Charlotte Mason education.

I have a feeling that when Ian’s ready to start first grade, I’ll probably be using Ambleside Online, a Charlotte Mason based curriculum, as my main source for inspiration, much like I’m using ABC Jesus Loves Me for preschool.  I looked through their booklists for the first few years and fell in LOVE.  So many of my old favorites were on there, and I love the idea that those can BE our schoolwork, rather than trying to squeeze them in on top of schoolwork!  But as I’ve said before, I’m a tweaker, and I doubt I’ll do everything quite as laid out.

The one thing I did do was compile a massive list of books I want to be sure to read with my children while they’re young.  I took all the books used in Five in a Row (including B4FIAR and volumes 1-4), the Ambleside Year 0/Kindergarten list, the Simply Charlotte Mason Early Years Booklist, and the Kindergarten list from An Old Fashioned Education and looked to see which books were on more than one of these lists.  Those were the books I decided I really wanted to make sure we got to.  Then I picked the ones that seemed best for younger kids and pencilled them onto our school calendar for the next year.  I’m not going to share that list, because to be honest, it’s just too much evidence of how obsessive I am about books.  (As if describing the process I went through didn’t already reveal that!)

Can you see how I’m having a hard time not centering our school around books?  That’s why I’m so thankful for ABC Jesus Loves Me .  I make the Bible story the first thing I plan, the first thing I teach, and the center of all we do throughout the week.  Then instead of using the “book of the week” in the curriculum, I take one from my own list (many of them are actually on both).  That way I’m still touching on the literature I want to share, but I don’t spend a lot of time each week thinking about it.

Okay, so I think that’s all the background stuff.  Next time I’ll start sharing a little about what we are actually doing.

Posted in Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason, Our Vision
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